Monday, March 29, 2010

They've made David Droga's name more prominent than mine on the cover, which is an absolute scandal, but other than that, I do like the design.

The book is launching on May 25th, but is available for pre-order now at your local Amazon.

It is published by Laurence King, who publish various creative and arty books. Have a look at their website. There's some nice stuff there.

Quite a few blogs are becoming books nowadays, such as Stuff White People Like and E-mails From An Asshole, and like those other guys, I've shamefully neglected my blog once I got the book deal. In my defence, let me explain the difficulty. The publisher doesn't want the entire book to consist of material that's already available for free on the internet. And I just don't have enough interesting things to say to fill both a blog and a book. (I'd guess it's netted-out that the book is around 75% new content).

There are of course already lots of books about advertising out there, but the 'angle' of my one is that there is nothing in it about what makes a good ad, or how to write good ads. Instead, it's all about what you need to know to be a successful creative, above and beyond being good at writing ads. So it's not about craft, it's about guile. It's about how to get the best out of directors, how to find the right partner, and how to sell more of your ideas to your CD.

I really had a lot of fun writing it. In addition to my possibly dubious advice for young creatives, there are also interviews with proper people like Trevor Beattie, Jeremy Craigen, Paul Silburn, Flo Heiss, Jeff Benjamin (interactive ECD at Crispin Porter), Amir Kassaei (chief creative officer of DDB Germany) and Aussie creative entrepreneur Siimon Reynolds, as well as the foreword by David Droga.

If you'll forgive me, I'm not going to start Scamp up again like before, but I will use this space to talk about the book, and the marketing of the book.